Things Unchanged
by xerxia31
Summary: Peeta and Katniss have been best friends for years. When the past comes back to haunt them, will it bring them closer together, or drive them apart? Written for the D12Drabbles challenge on Tumblr, the prompt was An unexpected letter arrives in the mail.


Our house is quiet when I get home from work, which is strange. Katniss's car is in the driveway, but she's not puttering in the kitchen. I imagine she's out on the deck, enjoying the last of a truly gorgeous spring day. So I grab two beers from our fridge and make my way back to join her.

She's curled up on the ridiculously overpriced (but admittedly comfy) loveseat she insisted we buy, reading, a soft smile teasing her perfect peach lips.

She hasn't noticed me yet, so I pause a moment to watch her. Her bare legs, toned and tanned, are slung over the arm of the couch, painted toes swaying. She tucks a strand of raven hair behind her ear as she laughs at something on the sheets of paper she's clutching.

Katniss is utterly captivating, her beauty exceeded only by her kindness and her loyalty. We have been best friends since we were children, and housemates since college, but I've loved her forever. She, however, has never given me any indication that she thinks of me as more than her best friend. And that's enough, it really is. But I can't change how I feel about her. God knows I've tried.

I shake away those thoughts and slide open the patio doors, and she startles, hastily refolding her papers and tucking them into an envelope beside her. "You're home early," she says with false brightness, but there's a sad undertone to her voice.

"Nope," I pop, handing her a beer and falling onto the seat beside her, holding out my arm so she can read the time on my watch.

"Oh, I guess I lost track of time," she murmurs. I shrug, and she shifts, leaning into my shoulder. I wrap an arm around her and enjoy the closeness. Katniss isn't a touchy-feely person at all, but she's always been affectionate with me and there's little I like more than the feeling of her soft body curled against my chest.

We sip our beers in silence, but I can tell she's preoccupied. "Something you want to share with the class, Miss Everdeen?" I ask, affecting the voice I use with my sophomore English students. She chuckles, but doesn't answer. If I had to label it, I'd call her mood melancholy, and that's so not Katniss. "Seriously," I continue after a few beats, cupping her chin and tilting her lovely face so that I can meet her silver eyes. "Are you okay?"

She smiles, but when I start to pull my hand back she grasps it, keeping it pressed against her soft cheek for a few moments longer before lowering our joined hands and twining her fingers with mine. Her brow furrows slightly as her eyes search mine. I don't know what she's looking for. "Why don't you date?" she asks softly, and I tense up. It's not the first time she's asked, but she's not teasing me this time. Her gaze is even and serious.

"I date," I mumble, pulling my hand away and reaching for my beer, taking a large swig. I do date. Occasionally.

"You've never had a serious girlfriend, Peeta, not once in all of the time I've known you. Why?" This is where I'd usually go with my standard _haven't met the right girl_ line, but it's a lie. I met the right girl twenty years ago. I go, instead, on the offensive.

"What about you, huh? You haven't gone out once since Darius." Even saying his name makes my stomach knot. They'd dated for five months about two years ago. It was the longest five months of my life. But she ignores me.

"You're handsome, you're smart, you're kind. Women throw themselves at you all of the time!"

"Stop, Katniss, please," I groan, pulling away from her and leaning forward on my knees. She's going to try to set me up with another one of her coworkers, I know it. The last time that happened things were awkward between us for weeks after, and I swore never again.

She leans forward too, resting her chin against my shoulder. Then she sets an envelope on the wicker table in front of me. Her name and our address stare up at me, in my father's hand. "He found something he thought I should have," she murmurs, by way of explanation.

My father has been clearing out the house I grew up in for weeks now, readying it for sale. He's sent an almost constant barrage of emails detailing the treasures he's uncovered, sifting through nearly 30 years worth of memories packed into one small bungalow.

I make no move to touch the envelope since it's not addressed to me and she sighs, pulling from it a folded sheaf. On top is a sticky note, embossed with Mellark's Bakery. I can't resist reading the few lines of text.

 _Katniss_ , he writes. _I found this in Peeta's old room, and I knew you would want to read it. Love, Dad._

My lips quirk upward at the signature. Katniss is the daughter my father always wanted, sometimes I think he's closer to her than to me or my brothers. I know she feels the same way about him. I glance over at her, and she snorts, an exasperated little sound. "Aren't you the least bit curious?" she asks, shaking her head but not waiting for an answer.

When she unfolds the pages and places them in front of me I gasp.

Though I'm an artist by nature and a teacher by trade, my penmanship is atrocious, and it always has been. Staring back at me, a portal through time, is unmistakably the heavy-handed scrawl my younger self favoured. The first few words nearly leap off the page. _My dearest Katniss_ , it starts. And I cringe. It can't be.

I snatch the papers up quickly enough to knock her head off my shoulder, but I can't even think over the pounding in my ears. I'm not a letter writer, I never have been, always preferring to talk. But there was that one time, when we were 15. Katniss's aunt sent her away for an entire summer to some residential camp. Effie was full of ideas about what a proper young lady should be doing with her time, none of which interested Katniss at all. She went to that camp, kicking and screaming maybe, but she went nonetheless. We were apart eight weeks. Eight seemingly endless weeks with zero contact. To this day it remains the longest we've ever been separated.

I was miserable, working in my dad's bakery by day, spending my nights lying in bed, lonely and wondering if she missed me half as much as I missed her. Wondering if she was falling in love with some guy at the camp.

So I wrote her a letter.

In it, I confessed, in the most awkward 15-year-old language possible, how much she meant to me. How beautiful I thought she was. How I would be the best boyfriend ever if she'd just give me a chance. Everything I'd ever longed to say to her was in there.

In the light of day I chickened out of sending it. I thought I'd shredded the letter at the time, but the papers clasped in my shaking hands suggest otherwise. Three notebook pages, single spaced, front and back, spewing out the entire contents of my teenaged soul.

This is what she was reading when I got home.

This is what she was laughing at?

And this is why she's sad.

I feel like I'm going to be sick.

Even a decade later I remember each word. I don't even read the pages, dropping them instead to the table and burying my hot face in my hands.

"Peeta?" Her breath skates across my ear and I shudder. "Did… did you mean all that?" I can't look at her. But I nod. "You never said anything." It isn't a question, but I answer it anyway.

"I was afraid." My words are muffled by my hands, but understandable. She's silent for what feels like an eternity, but I don't look up. I don't want to see her pity.

"When did it change, how… how you felt?" It's less a whisper than a breath but my head jerks up as if she's screamed.

"Change?" An odd little laugh escapes without my permission. I've fantasized about finally telling Katniss how I feel about her, over and over. But I never imagined it'd be something I was forced into by my traitor father. "Katniss, the only thing that's changed is that I love you even more now than I did then. That's why I don't date, no one has ever held a candle to you." She looks so confused, and my chest aches. Being speared would be less painful. I bury my face again. "I just couldn't risk losing you. You're my everything."

This is where Katniss bolts, I've seen it time and again, as soon as someone says or does anything to suggest they have any depth of feelings for her she runs, pulls a disappearing act. I've watched, even made excuses for her when the lovelorn are slow to comprehend that they're being avoided. And now it's my turn. The overstuffed cushions flex and shift as she moves.

But then her hand is on my knee and her chin on my shoulder. "Do you know why things didn't work out with Darius?" she asks. Yeah, I know, because he wanted more, and she didn't. Her laugh suggests I might have said that out loud. Or perhaps she's just read my mind. Wouldn't be the first time. "It didn't work out, Peeta," she says, leaning in to speak directly into my ear, "because Darius wasn't you."

My heart catches on far more quickly than my brain, pounding in response to her words. When I drop my hands and turn to look at her our mouths are only a hairsbreadth apart. "I've spent more than two years trying to figure out a way to tell you," she says, her cheeks flushing in a way I've never before seen.

"You… what?" My mind still can't comprehend what she's trying to say. Katniss rolls her eyes at me, but she's smiling. And then my brain is taken completely offline as she leans in.

The kiss is gentle, tentative, and over too quickly. She pulls back to smile shyly at me. "You have no idea how long I've wanted to do that," she murmurs, and a shit-eating grin spreads across my face.

This time I reach for her, pulling her into my lap, winding my fingers in her hair as our mouths crash together. As many times as I've dreamed of kissing Katniss the reality is so much better. So much better.

A decade of longing unwinds in caresses and sighs, in moans and desperate pleas. And when we finally break apart the sun is setting, painting her flushed cheeks and swollen lips in fire. "Is this real?" I ask her.

"So real, Peeta," she groans. "We've wasted so much time!"

I laugh. "We'll make up for it, I promise."


End file.
